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On Reality, Experience, and Truth: John Watson's ON REALITY, EXPERIENCE, AND TRUTH: JOHN WATSON’S UNPUBLISHED NOTES ON JOHN DEWEY JAMES SCOTT JOHNSTON (Memorial University) & SARAH MESSER (Memorial University) John Watson of Queen’s University Canada is one of three individuals John Shook has identified as improving Dewey’s nascent theory of sensations. Dewey Felt himselF indebted to Watson in regards to his early absolutism of selF/mind. In the Watson Fonds at Queen’s University, Canada, there are unpublished hand-written notes by Watson on Dewey’s 1905 “The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism” and 1906’s “Reality, Truth, and Experience.” In the context of these unpublished notes, we investigate Watson’s claims against Pragmatism generally, and Focus on reality, truth, and experience specifically. A brief introduction to Dewey’s theories of reality, truth, and experience precedes a fuller discussion of Watson’s chief criticisms, and an analysis of the strength of Watson’s arguments Follows. We claim throughout that what is at stake here are not two rival conceptions of philosophy, one realist and the other idealist, but rather two rival understandings of Idealism, one naturalized and the other Absolute. Volume 1 · Number 2 · Fall 2017 · Pages 48-69 James Scott Johnston & Sarah Messer 49 hat the neo-Idealism of the latter halF of the 19th century influenced the development of American Classical T Pragmatism Few would today deny.1 There has been a resurgence of interest in the relationship of one to the other; a resurgence that has led to the conclusion that John Dewey’s early philosophy of psychology and logic was influenced most profoundly by G.W.F. Hegel and the Scottish neo-Hegelians John and Edward Caird and Canadian John Watson, himselF close to Edward Caird. 2 Indeed, it has been said Dewey’s early absolutism of self is explicitly indebted to Watson, among others.3 This would change, of course, as the development of Dewey’s Functional theory of organism and environment gradually pushed aside the neo-Idealist tropes of absolute, mind, and spirit.4 By the turn of the century Dewey is often said to have abandoned Hegelian garb in Favour of a Jamesian, Darwinian psychology and theory of knowledge in which adaptation and evolution took centre stage:5 the 1 Paul FairField, Introduction, John Dewey and Continental Philosophy (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009), 2. I understand by the term neo-Idealism, that school oF thought represented by British philosophers Following Hegel in the latter halF oF the 19th century. Neo-Idealism roughly accords with neo-Hegelianism For my purposes. 2 John Shook, John Dewey’s Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2000), p. 69; Christopher Humphrey, “The Sage of Kingston: John Watson and the Ambiguity of Hegelianism,” Phd. diss, (McGill University, 1992); Hilda Neatby, Queen’s University Vol. 1 1841-1917 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1978), 136. Watson was Edward Caird’s student while at Glasgow. 3 Shook, Dewey’s Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality, p. 69; See also, John Dewey, The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882-1953, ed. By Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969-1991), LW 5: 152-153, For Watson’s relationship to Dewey’s own teacher at Hopkins, G.S. Morris. 4 James Good, Rereading Dewey’s “Permanent Hegelian Deposit,” in John Shook and James Good, John Dewey’s Philosophy of Spirit, with the 1897 Lecture on Hegel, (New York: Fordham Press, 2010), p. 58. Good characterizes the “Absolute Knowing” at the end of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit as “Knowledge that does not seek to go beyond itself in order to ground itself.” Attempts to do this—attempts to cultivate a “transcendent absolute,” were the reason for Dewey’s abandonment of the British neo-Hegelians, according to Good. For they offered a “dogmatic posit” that neither Hegel, nor Dewey, would accept. 5 For example, Robert Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca: Dewey Studies Vol 1 · No 2 · Fall 2017 James Scott Johnston & Sarah Messer 50 imposing neo-Hegelian ediFice of Absolute Spirit as erected by neo- Idealists in the latter halF of the 19th century is, by the turn of the century, absent. Yet, Dewey himself has said that a “Hegelian bacillus” remained in his thought (LW 5.153). In contrast, Watson never shed his allegiance to Hegel: indeed, he became Further committed to moving Hegel’s heterodox account of Christianity to an orthodox conclusion. By 1906, the year of Dewey’s allegiance to “immediate empiricism,” Watson was in the process of developing what would become a novel (though neo-Hegelian) philosophy of religion.6 Dewey and Watson had the opportunity to correspond several times between the late 1880’s and the early 1890’s. Much of this correspondence is no longer extant. However, we know From Dewey’s letters that he had at least some contact with Watson.7 Watson kept himself apprised of Dewey’s work, as is evident from an unpublished collection of notes on Dewey’s pragmatism written circa 1907-1908. In what Follows, we will examine these notes and discuss the particular Findings of Watson in bringing attention to problems in Dewey’s treatment of central issues. These issues we will call 1) the problem of Reality 2) the problem of Experience, and Finally 3) the problem of Truth. However, before we begin this, we want to discuss Dewey’s uses of these terms as they appear in the chief articles that Watson is examining: “The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism” (1905), and “Reality, Truth, and Experience (1906). It will be our claim in the Final section of the paper that, though both Idealists in the broadest sense of the term, Watson misses the move Cornell University Press, 1991), 61. 6 See J.M. MacEachran, “John Watson,” Some Great Men of Queen’s, edited by R. C. Wallace (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1941). 7 Dewey and Watson corresponded on occasion during the late 1880’s and early 1890’s. However, and for reasons yet unknown, Dewey and Watson ceased corresponding after this time. It may well be that Dewey’s turn from neo-Idealism to functionalism and evolutionary naturalism played a role. On Dewey’s contact with Watson, see for example Dewey’s letter to Alice Chipman Dewey (1907 04 16) in John Dewey, The Correspondence of John Dewey Vol 1, edited by L. Hickman (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003). Dewey discussed attending a lecture by Watson at the Brooklyn Institute in New York City. Dewey Studies Vol 1 · No 2 · Fall 2017 James Scott Johnston & Sarah Messer 51 Dewey makes to describe in Functional language what are Hegelian concepts of the real, oF truth, and of the phenomenology of experiencing and in missing these, charges Dewey (wrongly, in our estimation) with what are insoluble problems from Watson’s Objective Idealist standpoint.8 Part I: Dewey on Reality, Experience, and Truth circa 1905- 1906. Dewey had spent the previous 10 years of study in Familiar/comfortable collegial circumstances, For he was head of a philosophy department that had become known For its characteristic blend of pragmatism and social thought. This ‘Chicago School,’ as William James labelled it, would continue on despite Dewey’s departure For Columbia University in 1904. In his new setting, Dewey encountered realism unvarnished, owing chiefly to the influence of the Aristotelian F.W. Woodbridge and the “critical realist” J.P. Montague.9 This had a profound impact on the tenor of the articles Dewey would write; they became more apologetic of 8 By Objective Idealist, we mean an account oF the relationship oF mind, consciousness, or thought that grasps the world such that everything we can say about the world is a matter oF and For, thought. This does not discount an account oF reality as beyond thought, though it does inhibit the account From having Features or properties that can operate as predicates in propositions or claims. In the naturalized version oF Idealism, suspension, negation, and sublation are rendered into naturalist metaphors oF adaptation and evolution, while Reality remains thoroughgoing in respect oF nature and experience. In the spiritualized version oF Idealism, the Absolute takes on theological connotations and Reality is bifurcated into natural and metaphysical realms. The Former may be seen in John Dewey, John Dewey’s Philosophy of Spirit, with the 1897 Lecture on Hegel; the latter in John Watson, The Philosophical Basis of Religion (Glasgow: James Maclehose and Sons, 1907). See also James Scott Johnston, John Dewey’s Earlier Logical Theory (Albany, Ny: SUNY Press, 2014) for more on Hegel’s naturalism and Dewey’s Further naturalization oF Hegel. 9 Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy,” 119. For an emergent and alternative reading, however, see John Shook, “The Nature Philosophy oF John Dewey,” Dewey Studies 1(1) (2017). Dewey Studies Vol 1 · No 2 · Fall 2017 James Scott Johnston & Sarah Messer 52 Pragmatism and Instrumentalism and critical of epistemology, Idealism, and classical Empiricism. Reality, Experience, and Truth were topics of mutual concern to Dewey and his critics. Indeed, these were the very topics in dispute, as we will see in regards to Watson. Here, we wish to discuss what Dewey’s understandings of Reality, Experience, and Truth circa 1905-1906 were in broad outlines. We will note where he disagreed with both realist and idealist understandings as we proceed. We will also demonstrate that the concepts Dewey was working with were in Fact not alien to Idealism—at least a naturalized and Functional version of it. It is this naturalization of Idealism that Watson misses in his criticism of Dewey’s Idealism and it is these understandings that we wish to capture in the Final section of the paper.
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